But in this case the point is a bit moot anyway as laws of war apply only to losers.
For example Mexico's fight with drug cartels is widely considered to meet the definition of non international armed conflict.
Of all the things that people on the left might find objectionable about Trump, this should be at the very far bottom of the list.
You're saying it's fine that they're killed for something they could "maybe" do in the future? Without even seeing any evidence that they're doing what they're accused of today? Have there been instances in the past of drug smugglers moving into the nuclear warhead smuggling game?
Smuggling of any sort is a weapon with disastrous consequences. We wouldn't let the cartels have nukes, why would we want them to have "smuggling"? Yes, I'm fine with this. That they promise not to use it for really bad stuff for now wouldn't make a difference (and they're not even making that promise).
>Without even seeing any evidence t
I'm not interested in being the internet jury for this, no.
>Have there been instances in the past of drug smugglers moving into the nuclear warhead smuggling game?
Gee. That's something I really want to wait until after they commit the offense before we do something about it. You've changed my mind with your top-notch debate strategy.
Because usually we only respond to behaviours and actions that actually exist in the real world. By this logic we should charge all shop lifters with treason because they're not promising they'll never steal state secrets.
> Gee...You've changed my mind with your top-notch debate strategy.
I'm not sure why you're choosing to take this tone but I would hope we could have any further discussion like adults.
Source: I did a deployment in counter drug interdiction in the Navy.
Edit: if you really want to know how threatening these guys are, they usually spotted our aircraft and the first thing they did was ALWAYS to jettison any weapons they had immediately, then start throwing out the drugs. They knew they weren’t fighting a USN ship and that we weren’t guns to harm them if they were peaceful. I suspect they might fight back now, though.
Oh. Wow. That makes it ok then. As long as they can all play hot potato and the drug runners don't have it on their own persons when the missile hits, it was unjustifiable.
In other words, most of the boats our intelligence apparatus thought were possible supply boats were simply fishermen. We are definitely killing some innocent fishermen with these strikes, and even if we weren't it's not ethical or legal to murder a bunch of guys selling fuel to drug runners. By the way, all of the drug runners are basically indentured servants or slaves and their families are being held back home as collateral.
Keep thinking you're on the side of right, though, and when you realize the USA is the baddies on this one you will hopefully be horrified at the realization.
Given that the left are the only ones complaining about the extrajudicial killings under the Obama administration, I disagree.
Personally, I find public officials murdering unarmed people objectionable in practically all cases. And I think it's probably the worst thing a public official can do.
I see no evidence of that. The only places I've ever noticed any complaints there were from the alt-right and libertarians (same thing?). You can see this in magazine titles like Reason if you care to check.
>I find public officials murdering unarmed people
What evidence is there that these people were unarmed? And what if they were? If there was 800 pounds of cocaine (or whatever) on board, and they didn't even have a butter knife with them... why should that somehow exempt them from the hostile response they received?
The administration wants to see results and it would seem that the problem is that the American judicial systems is set up to simply cost money, which is something narcos have.
If you take a cartel to court, they just have a lawyer tie up your law team. We've made the mistake of allowing capitalism to influence too many of our systems of government from judicial (cost of lawyers) to electoral (advertisement costs and political campaigning). Isn't this the problem?
lol, no. Alt-rights may call themselves "libertarian" while they're testing the waters before they can admit to themselves that their real desires are rooted in coercing people. But libertarianism, being concerned with individual liberty, is fundamentally leftist. The rightist axiomatic conception of the US "Libertarian" party can be useful on a small scale, but scaled up it doesn't amount to much beyond just another system of control. Proof by contradiction - definitionally ruling out coercion based on intrinsic market inefficiencies means one can merely reframe any government as a monopolistic corporation with onerous contracts to achieve a hollow "Libertopia".
Saying the quiet part out loud: "Murdering people without due process should be at the bottom of the list of things to care about." Yes, thank you for clearly outlining the "right's" position on the issue.
Oh sure. A 5% chance of finding that boat on that particular day, and confiscating the device. That sounds like a great idea. I think I'd rather stick with causing the smugglers enough misery that they consider another line of work.
The US attacks people and countries without declaring war.
If anyone did this to the US, can you imagine the butt-hurt response?
Declaring a war stopped being a thing after world war 2. Not just for usa but for everyone. In modern times a decleration of war has no meaning in international law. It only has meaning in domestic law.
I think the reason is that the UN charter makes it illegal to fight a war except in self-defense. In modern times declerations of war have generally been replaced with sending a notice to the un security council that you intend to use your right to self defense. I dont know about this particular situation but i think a lot of the time historically the US has followed that procedure.
which this is not, so what's your point?
From what i understand there are two requirements
- the violence has to be intense enough. I think we are there
- the other side has to be an organized armed group capable of conducting warfare. This is the part that seems to be a stretch. The drug runners may be organized but are they really capable of conducting warfare? The quote i found from the red cross is: "Non-governmental groups involved in the conflict must be considered as "parties to the conflict", meaning that they possess organized armed forces. This means for example that these forces have to be under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations."
So the precedent is there that this is how we do things. It's not just this operation. (If you don't like that, what do you want? Do you want to require that the military get Congressional approval for every operation in which someone might get killed?)
At least (just today), some members of Congress finally got briefed on the classified intel that leads people to think that these are in fact drug smugglers getting killed.
Look, I'm not saying that bombing these boats is justified. I'm just saying that the Congressional oversight rules are not unique to this operation.